Price was later joined by Alex Hastings, his fellow graduate and an
expert in computer programming. Hastings joined the studio in June
1994. Hastings' brother Brian Hastings joined Insomniac shortly
afterwards. The studio was named "Xtreme Software" for a year but in
1995 it was forced to rename itself by another company with the same
name. The studio shortlisted "The
ResistanceResistance Incorporated",
"Ragnarok", "Black Sun Software", "Ice Nine" and "Moon Turtle" before
choosing the name "Insomniac Games". According to Price, the company
chose this name because "it suddenly makes sense", even though it was
not their first choice.

Shortly after the company's establishment, it began developing its
first project. The team took inspirations from the popular Doom , and
hoped to capitalize upon the industry's excitement for a first-person
shooter . The team still lacked experience and considered developing a
"
Doom clone ". The game was developed for the Panasonic 3DO because
its developer kit can be purchased inexpensively, and the team had
high hopes for the console. Using a time frame of one month, the team
developed a functional gameplay demo for the game. It was pitched to
various publishers and was later shown to
Mark CernyMark Cerny , an executive
producer from
Universal Interactive Studios , who was impressed by the
team's efforts. Universal later published the game and helped with
funding and marketing. Universal also helped the game's development
and cutscenes, and hired actors to film real-time sequences. Catherine
Hardwicke was hired to lead production design, and inspirations were
taken from Warhawk .

Cerny also gave input and feedback on the game's level-design.
However, the 3DO did not perform as they had expected, and Universal
suggested that the team should switched to Sony Computer Entertainment
's
PlayStationPlayStation to increase sales of the game. The game originally ran
on a custom engine developed by Alex Hastings, and was upgraded and
converted for the
PlayStationPlayStation within a month. The debut title was
called Disruptor , and was released worldwide in November 1996.

Disruptor was released to positive critical reception, and was named
"Dark Horse of the Year" by various gaming publications.
John RomeroJohn Romero ,
founder of Doom developer id Software praised the game. Insomniac
considered Disruptor a lesson about video game development. According
to Price, it was "the best game that nobody ever heard of". With
little marketing and advertisement, the game was a commercial failure
for Insomniac and the company almost went bankrupt. Sales of Disruptor
failed to meet the team's expectations. Despite the game's poor
performance, Universal continued to partner with Insomniac for its
next game. The team's morale was low; they decided to develop
something new instead of a sequel to Disruptor.

At that time, the demography for the
PlayStationPlayStation shifted as more
teenagers and children started to use the console to play video games.
As a result, the team decided not to make another violent game like
Disruptor and instead develop a family-friendly game that would be
suitable for every member of a family, regardless of their age. The
family game market was dominated by Sony's competitor
NintendoNintendo with
games like
Super Mario 64 , while the
PlayStationPlayStation has no similar
exclusives. Cerny later pushed
Insomniac GamesInsomniac Games to develop a game with
a mascot and mass appeal. An environment artist of Disruptor, Craig
Stitt proposed that the game's theme and story should revolve around
an anthropomorphic dragon. At the same time, Alex Hastings began
developing an engine that specialized in games with panoramic view ,
which is suitable for open world games. The engine allowed more
gameplay features including the ability for the dragon to glide
through air.
Spyro the Dragon was released in late 1998.

The game received critical acclaim upon launch and received awards
from publications. Sales of the game were relatively low initially,
but climbed after Christmas that year, and overall sales of the game
exceeded two million. The team was expanded to 13 staff members.
Because of
Spyro the Dragon's success, the studio was requested to
develop a sequel for it. The development of
Spyro 2: Ripto\'s Rage!
began shortly after the launch of
Spyro The Dragon. The team
considered developing the sequel a challenge for them; they had to
develop new ideas to "revolutionize" the franchise within a short
time. The team brainstormed ideas but later chose to expand a
mini-game from the original
Spyro the Dragon, which they thought had
offered a different experience from Spyro. The team also designed a
mature story and advanced cinematics for the game. It met its target
release window, and was released in late 1999. Alex Hastings was
worried about the release because the game's development cycle was
rushed and truncated.

2000S

So we decided that it was better for us to start a new franchise,
try to come up with a new character than to try it to push Spyro
again. —
Ted PriceTed Price on the aftermath of Spyro: Year of the Dragon.

The studio was asked to develop the third installment in the Spyro
the Dragon series upon the release of Ripto's Rage!. To make the game
more varied than its predecessors, the team introduced more special
moves for
Spyro The Dragon and more playable characters. The dragon's
personality was also made more approachable for players. The company
struggled to create new ideas for the sequel. During the game's
development, the team expanded to about 20 to 25 people. Brian
Allgeier , who would later become Insomniac's games' director, also
joined the studio at that time. Spyro: Year of the Dragon was
released worldwide in late 2000. After releasing three games in three
years, the team decided to move on for a new project that had new
original characters. Year of the Dragon is the last Insomniac
Games-developed
Spyro game. Universal retained the intellectual
property rights to the
Spyro series, even though Insomniac created it.
This was also the end of Insomniac games' partnership with Universal
as the team at Insomniac started to work directly to develop games for
the
PlayStationPlayStation consoles.

In 2000, Sony released its successor to PlayStation, the PlayStation
2 . Insomniac's ideas for its first
PlayStation 2PlayStation 2 project included
Monster Knight, a concept that was designed in 1999 but the game did
not get beyond its planning stage. The canceled project was revealed
13 years after the game's conception. The second title was Girl With
A Stick, which took inspirations from
The Legend of ZeldaThe Legend of Zelda and Tomb
Raider . It was intended as a serious game, and to prove Insomniac's
ability to create games other than platformers. Insomniac spent six
months on the project, developing several prototypes and a functional
demo. However, most staff members, beside Price, were not passionate
about the project, and thought it was "one-dimensional". Sony also
thought the game would not find a market, and recommended Insomniac to
"play to strengths". As a result, Girl With A Stick was scrapped.
According to Price, Girl with A Stick is a lesson for Insomniac and
its first failure.

A few weeks after the cancellation of Girl with a Stick, Brian
Hastings proposed that the company should work on a space adventure
game with a science fiction theme. The game originally revolved around
a reptilian alien with weapons traveling across planets. The reptile
character later evolved into a cavemen, and eventually became a
fictional creature called a Lombax. They later named the creature
Ratchet . They designed an android companion called Clank for Ratchet.
Inspirations for the game were drawn from manga, Conker\'s Bad Fur Day
and from
Spyro the Dragon. To differentiate the project from
Insomniac's previous projects, they made the game more complex and
included shooting and role-playing gameplay elements. The team was
excited about this project; however, the company was unable to develop
a demo for the game because it did not have a suitable engine. As a
result, they developed Art Nuevo de Flash Gordon, a Metropolis
diorama, for Sony, which decided to help the
Ratchet game's funding
and publishing.
Jason Rubin , on behalf of
Naughty DogNaughty Dog , lent
Insomniac the engine used in Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy .
The game's title was
Ratchet it was originally to be a launch title
for the
PlayStation 2PlayStation 2 but it was delayed by two years and was released
in November 2002. It was a critical success.

Five months before the launch of
Ratchet it received feedback from
players and improved some features of
Ratchet and Clank. About a year
later,
Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando was released, at which time
Insomniac had finished the prototype of their next game,
Ratchet ">'s
arenas. Alex Hastings continued to optimize the engine and increase
its processing power to fine-tune the game. The sales of Up Your
Arsenal were considerably higher than those of its predecessors; it
was the highest-rated game in the franchise's history.

Insomniac released three
Ratchet they developed an action game with
no platform elements. While the gameplay of the fourth game in the
series is similar to that of its predecessors, Clank's role was
significantly diminished and the character's name was removed from the
game's title. Ratchet: Deadlocked was released in 2005. Mark
Cerny gave advice on multiple Insomniac games.

While Insomniac was handling the development of the
Ratchet the
company wanted to have multiple projects in parallel development. This
project began development after the completion of Deadlocked. The team
agreed to develop something different for a different platform.
Inspired by
Starship TroopersStarship Troopers , Resistance: Fall of Man was
Insomniac's first first-person shooter after Disruptor. To make the
game stand-out, they experimented with turning it into a squad-based
shooter and introducing giant lizard enemies which were later
scrapped. Sony recommended Insomniac to change its lizard antagonist
because they were not fun to play with. Furthermore, the team disgreed
about the game's setting.

Cerny wanted to set the game—proposed as a "space opera"
game—during
World War IWorld War I , but this was later changed to World War II
because the developers wanted to introduced extreme weaponry to the
game. It was then shifted to the 1950s because the team considered
the market for
World War IIWorld War II shooter was over-saturated at that time.
Fall of Man was a launch title for the
PlayStationPlayStation 3; the team said
developing a new game for the console was a challenge because they had
to work quickly to meet its target release window. The game is a
financial and critical success, despite causing controversy over the
use of Manchester Cathedral . The development of the sequel soon
began; the team wanted to drastically change the game, leading to
internal debate between staff members. The sequel,
ResistanceResistance 2 , was
released in 2008.

Meanwhile, development of the
Ratchet and Clank franchise continued.
The team decided to rewrite the characters when the franchise shifted
to the
PlayStationPlayStation 3. They introduced the Future series, which
includes
Ratchet & ClankRatchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction (2007), Quest
For Booty (2008) and A Crack in Time (2009). In 2008, the company
established a new studio of 25 to 30 developers, led by Chad Dezern
and Shaun McCabe, in North Carolina. The new studio was responsible
for some of Insomniac's
Ratchet & ClankRatchet & Clank games.

2010S

Both the
ResistanceResistance franchise and the
Ratchet & ClankRatchet & Clank franchise
continued into the 2010s. The team in North Carolina developed Ratchet
& Clank: All 4 One , which received mixed reviews. The North Carolina
team continued to develop the next game in the series,
Ratchet it was
released in July 2012 for browsers and mobile platforms. Click was
later re-incorporated into Insomniac, and the browser version of
Outernauts was canceled.

The
EA Partners game was later officially revealed at Electronic
Entertainment Expo 2011 as Overstrike. This game was pitched by
Ratchet & ClankRatchet & Clank director
Brian Allgeier and it has a direction similar
to that of the
Ratchet & ClankRatchet & Clank series. The team thought Overstrike
would appeal to teenagers. After several play-testing sessions, they
realized their game was too simple for teenagers. The company
developed many weapons for the game, none of which related to the
game's story. The developers retooled the game and changed it to
attract older players and make weapons an important part of the game.
The game focuses on a co-operative campaign, which the company thought
was a popular trend at that time. It was later renamed Fuse and was
released worldwide on May 2013. Fuse was one of the lowest-rated games
developed by Insomniac, and was another commercial failure, debuting
in 37th place in UK in its first week of release. Fuse was
considered a learning lesson for Insomniac to understand the type of
game they are good at making. The reception to Fuse showed the company
it should develop "colorful, playful experience that's loaded with
unusual, sometimes silly weapons". Also in 2013, the last
Ratchet &
Clank Future game,
Ratchet their first pitch to Insomniac's head was
rejected as being too confusing. They were given one week to re-pitch
the title, and they persuaded studio heads to begin the game's
development. The game was later pitched to various publishers, which
rejected them because Insomniac demanded to retain ownership of the
IP. The project was later pitched to Microsoft Studios, which was
eager to work with Insomniac. Microsoft allowed Insomniac to own the
rights to the game.
Sunset Overdrive was made exclusive to
Microsoft's
Xbox OneXbox One console; it was released on the 20th anniversary
of Insomniac, in 2014.

During
E3 2015E3 2015 , the company announced
Edge of Nowhere , a
third-person action-adventure game for the virtual reality hardware
Oculus RiftOculus Rift . In April 2016, the company announced two new virtual
reality titles: Feral Rites, a hack and slash game, and The Unspoken,
a fantasy multiplayer game, exclusively for the Rift. According to
Price, the company began focusing on virtual reality projects as the
team is enthusiastic about the technology, and that it allows the
company to develop an expertise in creating VR game. The studio signed
exclusive deal with
Oculus VR as Insomniac believed that both
companies shared the same passion to " games to life", and that they
allowed Insomniac to retain the rights of their intellectual
properties. Price compared the agreement to their previous first-party
deals, and added that having the opportunity to develop games for the
first generation of VR platform is something the team could not
reject. Despite the new direction, Price added that they will not
give up on making console triple AAA video games. At
E3 2016 ,
Insomniac announced their next AAA title, Marvel\'s Spider-Man ,
developed exclusively for the
PlayStation 4PlayStation 4 in conjunction with Marvel
Entertainment . Bryan Intihar, producer of
Sunset Overdrive , will be
the game's creative director.

Insomniac GamesInsomniac Games focuses on maintaining its independence. Despite
working solely for Sony Interactive Entertainment for decades, it has
never been part of
SIE Worldwide Studios . The studio partnered with
Sony because Sony helped market Insomniac's games. The company's team
found being controlled by publishers frustrating. According to Price,
working with Sony is an "autonomous" process; Sony can provide input
into the development of games but Insomniac has complete control of
them. Insomniac later decided to produce games for platforms other
than Sony's
PlayStationPlayStation series so it can own the rights to its
franchises and establish its own brand identity.

When developing its next game, Insomniac usually works on games it
considers itself good at making; these focus on storytelling, creative
weapons, and third-person gameplay. The company also recognizes the
importance of developing new intellectual properties. The developers
thought they were lucky to have the opportunity to develop them.

Internally, the company's developers are given much creative freedom.
Uninvolved staff members can comment on the games' designs. Price
considered game design a kind of social design, in which the team
solve problems together. Price said trust is an essential part of a
game's development, and that honest communications between staff
members can ensure the correct direction of games. Price also said
admitting mistakes can help maximize creativity, and that the
company's leaders should be approachable by staff members.